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Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

forbes.com

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Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#41

Post by Bombthecat »

ssharp wrote: post #36
rb808 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a cheap thrill out of clicking ads to make people pay. Trump ad ... click Comcast ... click Ambulance chasing lawyer ... click click click So that would be better than random - a plugin that clicks the ads for things you don't like or aren't interested in.

If you really want to put a dent in things, search for medical issues and click the law firm ads. I've seen clicks costing in the high hundreds.

For real?

I also think that prices are extremely inflated.

Even stuff which shows like hundred people a day costs you 8 dollar per click. No amount of selling will you get back the money.

Imho something is wrong there...

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#42

Post by dragonwriter »

angusb wrote: post #16

Can anyone explain why it's the ad buyers that lose out in this case, not the ad network? Surely it makes way more sense for the ad networks to bare the financial responsibility of preventing ad fraud and not the ad buyer? (The ad equivalent of a money-back-guarantee) How is an ad buyer ever supposed to make an informed decision about how susceptible their chosen ad vendor is to fraud?

The ad networks are held responsible by basic economics -- the higher the fraud on a network, the lower the observed utility of advertising on that network, and, therefore, over time the less people are willing to pay to advertise on that network.

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#43

Post by magikbum »

syphilis2 wrote: post #39

I'm having trouble finding information about what laws cover "click fraud" or "ad fraud". The article mentioned that this was illegal behavior, but never provided any more detail. The closest I've gotten is US Title 18 - 1030, though I'm not sure if the article is even talking about US law. I did stumble across an article from 2014 arguing in favor of making click fraud a federal crime, which cited this advertisement…

It could simply imply it's "illegal" due to the contract those publisher sign with the SSPs and Exchanges that clear their inventory. i.e. "; iv) create "forced visit" traffic; v) create invisible or nested IFrames loading pages or ads; vi) intentionally falsify clicks: vii) modify or obscure display of ads; viii) fraudulently generate requests or clicks; or ix) use any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs."

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#44

Post by bryanrasmussen »

geocar wrote: post #37
fsaintjacques wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have a spamhaus for ad fraud? * list of botnet infected IPs participating in ad fraud * list of offending/incompetent SSP blindly accepting forged requests

> Can we have a spamhaus for ad fraud? There are a lot of vendors in this space now, offering various kinds of "spamhaus"-type solutions. They're all crap because they operate blacklists of various kinds to keep their customers dependent. The ideal scenario is for ad networks/SSPs to implement the anti-fraud technology themselves, however getting there from here is difficult: The first ad network to go clean will be…

I upvoted you because of your helpful list.

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

rbanffy wrote: post #30
UweSchmidt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a brazen attack on privacy, intrusive javascript tracks mouse movement, behaviour etc. and can detect if it's a human that does the clicking or your ad blocker/clicker. Next up might be eye tracking through the webcam, do you want an BS-armsrace with the ad industry or can we just block all that nonsense? If you sell shoes, put up some shoe ads with an affiliate link, shouldn't that work good enough? You'd save mi…

A VM running the an OS, a browser with some software identifying the interesting banners and clicking on the while they move the mouse and scroll the window in human-like ways. Imagine now a beefy box with a couple hundred VMs running on it. Now imagine fake cameras catching a rendered environment and tracking virtual eyes that move according to what the camera would expect. If you want ad networks that rely on camer…

Yes, I'm thrilled about running all that compute on my hardware.

Contrary to what many people in adtech and web development seem to believe, electricity isn't free. Not to mention such silly concerns as worldwide resource usage and climate change.

Basically, that's why advertising needs to be reigned in hard, squeezed with regulations until it starts to behave. Because it's a zero-sum game on enough fronts to make everyones' lives worse if it's not fought against hard.

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#46

Post by nemild »

Bombthecat wrote: post #40
ssharp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to put a dent in things, search for medical issues and click the law firm ads. I've seen clicks costing in the high hundreds.

For real? I also think that prices are extremely inflated. Even stuff which shows like hundred people a day costs you 8 dollar per click. No amount of selling will you get back the money. Imho something is wrong there...

You'd be surprised - it often implies the lifetime value of the potential customer is exceptionally high, despite low conversion rates (a medical lawyer is a good example, as are insurance products with high stickiness).

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#47

Post by opaqe »

I thought this was about videos on YouTube. Maybe this isn't new but my suggestion box gets flooded by videos that are segments of longer content (Louis ck shows/appearances, Zizek lectures). Maybe this is hand-curated stuff by a bunch of independent channels but I'd be curious if this is done algorithmically. At least the video segmentation part.

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#48

Post by ssharp »

Bombthecat wrote: post #40
ssharp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to put a dent in things, search for medical issues and click the law firm ads. I've seen clicks costing in the high hundreds.

For real? I also think that prices are extremely inflated. Even stuff which shows like hundred people a day costs you 8 dollar per click. No amount of selling will you get back the money. Imho something is wrong there...

I've never done work for a law firm but have talked to some and the small shops specializing in easy cases like DUI's and personal bankruptcies can pretty easily fill up their billable hours by turning an AdSense campaign on and not coming close to eating away their margin.

I'd guess on the keywords where law firms are spending hundreds per click, you're dealing with malpractice and personal injury cases. Those cases are likely to be done on contingent and can have pretty huge upsides. I'd think a well-run firm would have some idea of the expected value of those types of cases and can spend accordingly to acquire clients. Considering how targeted search ads are compared to how these firms normally advertise -- local TV, radio, billboards, busses, etc. the costs probably aren't radically different than they're used to spending on advertising.

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#49

Post by rbanffy »

finid wrote: post #35
rbanffy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A VM running the an OS, a browser with some software identifying the interesting banners and clicking on the while they move the mouse and scroll the window in human-like ways. Imagine now a beefy box with a couple hundred VMs running on it. Now imagine fake cameras catching a rendered environment and tracking virtual eyes that move according to what the camera would expect. If you want ad networks that rely on camer…

Your imagination, my friend, scares me.

We scare because we care.

Re: Hackers Make $5M a Day by Faking 300M Video Views

#50

Post by Eridrus »

geocar wrote: post #15

Normally a "real browser" can't run 100s of ad players at once, but "methbrowser" is a node.js application with a C module that speaks Flash's plugin protocol directly. It simulates a dom, runs JavaScript in a node VM, but doesn't have to do any of the messy rendering that things like PhantomJS have to. It was discovered years ago because: * Their IP stack was acting like Linux[1] * Their flash player said "I'm Linux…

> It was discovered years ago

And yet they're still active with the same tech stack.

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